I dont think thats logical. We have news Iran is in preliminary agreement to a deal. they have no reason to sign a deal that isn't advantageous to them. so we can assume by extension that the deal itself is advantageous to them, which means money and control of the strait. Nuclear was always a bit of a red herring in the deal talks, Iran knew they couldn't secure a deal that included it after this war, and the US would never allow it, and given that they can just bomb the strait or our gulf allies' infrastructure its not even needed as desperately as it looked to be needed a few years ago. we lived in a deluded reality where the world assumed Iran needed a nuke to prevent the US and Israel from eventually taking it down. Well we tried to foment revolution, they put it down. We tried to kill their leader to compel a surrender, they didn't surrender. we tried to bomb them into submission, and failed. they took the upper hand and closed the straight, so we countered, and they took the upper hand again and bombed gas refineries. We're losing, so we can't even hope for a deal that we win with. its not dooming, its observation.
I gotta disagree with the basic premise of all of that. We stopped the bombing early on and could bomb them a lot more if we wanted to. Particularly their entire oil infrastructure, in retaliation after they go scorched earth on the Gulf states' oil infrastructure. A significant chunk of their own population genuinely hates their guts and remains in a prerevolutionary mood. If nothing else, this forces them to keep dedicating a lot of resources and manpower toward keeping their populace at bay.
Regarding the US in particular: North America is a net exporter of oil and gas. In an all-out war scenario, they could cope with a longterm closure of the strait, or destruction of the Gulf infrastructure. They would need to issue exports control, and the global economy would tank, which is both really bad for the shareholders. But in an existential crisis, NA could weather this storm. Could the Iranian regime weather a permanent loss of their oil revenue? Most definitely not.
The way I see it, Iran just barely hung on in this war, mainly because they were able to retain their threat potential. Via attacks on the Gulf infrastructure and tankers, they were able to threaten the infliction of just enough economic damage to dissuade the US from further escalation. Nonetheless, the blockade of their ports inflicted serious economic damage on them, as did the bombings. Their military, leadership and significant chunks of their arms industry are destroyed. (Unfortunately, primitive rockets and drones aren't exactly high-tech and can be produced in decentralized fashion.)
Furthermore, their previous strategy of deterring a US/ISR attack via their proxies in Lebanon/Gaza/Yemen has proven to be a spectacular failure. Their uranium enriching facilities lie in ruins, and I really doubt that it would be easy for them to just dig up the buried uranium they had already enriched and continue from there. The Gulf states will build bypasses to the Strait, which Iran won't be able to permanently stop. (Bombing pipelines is very inefficient.)
And while their threat of going scorched earth on the Gulf infrastructure is a powerful tool, it would inevitably trigger a new war if they go through with it, so it's a deterrence to stop us from attacking them, but not something they could realistically leverage into new aggression/offense of their own.
So my personal tldr is that Iran was able to get to a stalemate from an unfavorable starting position, but they are clearly weaker than they were before and you can hardly call all of that a "win" for them.
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jun 17 2026 06:36am